I suppose if I wanted to make my life easier, I would stop working. I only work part time but after each shift I am so drained, and in so much pain, but I keep working. I have rhuematoid arthritis, and I know that is what causes the pain. I do it because, I was once agoraphobic, still am to a very small degree in that the panic attacks don’t control me any more, but they make themselves felt occassionally. I am frightened when I am not in my house. If I stayed home, I know that I would never leave again. It was so difficult to be able to leave the house on my own, and I can’t give that up. I’m just not strong enough to go through what it took to get to this point again.

As I keep telling you all ad nauseam, my husband died a couple of years ago, and we had accumulated a lot of stuff because we live in an old factory and had plenty of extra space. So now I’m redistributing stuff we never used and stuff he’ll never be here to use. But there’s so much! Right now I’m slowly selling his shop tools. (I will never, never use a wood lathe.) Flutherers helped me figure out how to sell his
automotive projects. Gave a good car away, sold another, motorcycles next, it’s getting clearer. As the Stuff dissipates, so does my brainfog.

Why have I chosen to do it the hard way? To me that means, Why didn’t I just take everything to an auction all at the same time – an auction, the dump, and the Goodwill? Answer: because letting go is a slow process. Every object I touch, move, or examine needs to tell me stories before I say goodbye to it.

I’m married to a lazy slob who travels a lot anyway, but I’m then left with looking after his responsibility when he’s gone, including taking care of his teen age, autistic son. If I wanted to simplify my life, I’d divorce him so I didn’t have to pick up after him and look after his son. Why don’t I? Because I love the boy as if he were my own, and if we didn’t have the same address, I’d have to give overnight custody visits with our younger son and I don’t trust that he can look after him properly. Sometimes… the harder road is the better road.

Sometimes I think my life would be simpler if I would have never started using the internet so much. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve learned a lot and made some great friends. But in the end, it’s information I could have learned anyway and people who I will most likely never meet. The latter is what makes me sad sometimes.

I have kept my life “simpler” by almost always working part time rather than full time. It has been a trade-off in income and prestige, and obviously, I have been lucky to be able to afford to, but it has allowed me to live with a smaller amount of stress and more time to develop myself in other ways.

My life is tough because this is what I was given. I cope and do decently.
I have an Autistic Son.
I thank the Lord for all his success. I pray he will continue to improve. I fear the future; because he only has one year left in school.
I do not procrastinate I plan.

I wish there was a simple way to lose weight, but until they invent a pill that will let me sit in my recliner all day, and eat whatever I want and stay healthy, I will have to continue to do it the hard way.

@fayeWaiting is not simple! It is one of the hardest and most complex activities of a human’s life, after all, aren’t we all just waiting to die?

Life would be more simple if I could learn to recognise the things that are important, and let go of the things that are not.

It would be simpler if I could ever allow myself to start an activity I enjoy without having to finish it in one sitting, e.g. put down the book and go to sleep.

It would be simpler if I could motivate myself to finish an activity I hate doing, without getting distracted in the middle, e.g. stop fluthering and get back to cleaning the bathroom, cooking the dinner etc.

It would be simpler if I wasn’t so obsessed with detail, and if I could focus on more than one task at once.

It would be simpler if I didn’t set such high standards for myself, or such unrealistic goals.

It would be simpler if I didn’t live half way around the world from my family and friends.